Return to Author Return to Main PageIn my last article I had made the reader aware of the significantly dangerous and insidious capabilities regarding proprietary software and Digital Rights Management (DRM) through real experiences. To further our examination of technological control over individuals, in this article I discuss technological financial control which can be easily exploited to restrict an individual or a population.
Firstly, everyone loves a story so let us to start off with an analogy. I want you to imagine you are holding a nice new gold ring flushed with beautiful sparkling diamonds. The ring accidentally slides off your hand and falls towards the ground, in desperation you quickly try to swipe your hand mid air in an attempt to catch the ring that you admired so much. You manage to quickly clench your whole fist around what you perceive was that falling ring. As you raise your clenched fist to eye level, you notice yourself grinning out of satisfaction knowing you saved your beautiful ring from being damaged. With your attention focused on your clenched fist, you open your hand and take a peek noticing to your horror the ring is not there. The ring actually fell and hit the ground, there it sits on the floor waiting for you to pick it up and admire its beauty once again.
This analogy represents a good story gone bad. There are two embedded meanings in this analogy which all too well relate to this article. The first embedded meaning is that first quick hand swipe into the air and that grin you had, perfectly resembles the governments satisfaction once a cashless society is fully implemented. The second meaning regarding that look of horror on your face when you realise you didn't actually catch the ring and it hit the floor hard. This second meaning represents what each and every one of us will experience once the government and banking sector has total control of your finances. I guess everyone loves a story, although the story I just told no one will like and majority of people will continue to ignore what is set to be a reality as we continue to use digital payment systems instead of cash.
Now lets wind back the clock from my analogy and focus on the here and now, with the outlook towards what we can expect in the future. It is true today as it will be true in the future, technological advances will continue to expand and we will continue to see increases in efficiency and not to mention eventually placing restraints our freedoms and anonymity. To say not to use electronic payments would absolutely make me a hypocrite as I have used these technologies before; even though I have continued to decrease my dependence on electronic payments. However to discuss the dangers and to understand how these technologies will lead us into a dead end trap with no control over our finances I believe is entirely appropriate. Should you come to the conclusion to cease electronic payments, I would not disagree. My first area I wish to briefly discuss is the act of convenience, because this is the main driving force behind what will eventually lead our finances into a cashless society and having involuntary constraints placed upon us resulting in the total loss of control for the individual.
It would be silly to argue against the fact electronic payment methods such as Bpay, Alipay, Paypal, credit cards, eftpos, RFID Paywave and the newer apple pay and Google wallet etc are all convenient ways to purchase things. The reality is the convenience of these types and others forms of electronic payments is the sole reason the rapid uptake is so popular in Australia. Reasons such as quick and efficient payments, not requiring to carry bulky or weighty cash, access to larger amounts of money that one would normally carry are three main reasons why people use electronic transactions so often. Another reason why people could prefer to use electronic transactions is because carrying a credit card comes with the perceptional element of security which cash doesn’t offer. This is to say, if you drop your wallet the cash is very easy to take without a trace. However credit cards will add at least a barrier to slow down taking of the money. This is not to say money from credit cards can’t be taken, in fact a person could quite easily use a paywave (RFID) to purchase smaller items. Unfortunately the downside of using all forms of cashless payment technologies over a period of time will increasingly jeopardise the validity of printing cash in the long run. Thus at some point there will be a tipping point where the need to print cash will no longer be a primary necessity and from this point a rapid decline in cash use will ensue. Cheques have all ready fallen victim to the technological advances of electronic payments, and their days are currently numbered.
At the end of the day whether it be cash or electronic payments, they both achieve the end result of purchasing a product. However, the level of control over the money verse efficiency and convenience is an entirely different matter. Some advantages of electronic payments are as follows:
Australia Payments Clearing Association (APCA) shows that in financial year 2016 a total sum of $530,820,693 was lost to financial fraud, which is pretty frightening I must say. An even more worrying statistic was in respect to proprietary credit card fraud their was a total of $21,972,273 lost with peoples PIN numbers being used, and a total of $16,840,961 was lost to counterfeit and skimming alone. Another concerning statistic is the financial losses that totaled $156,206,402 from electronic payment systems such as credit cards, debit cards and charge cards were absent during the fraudulent transaction occurring. Yes you just read correctly, the cards were absent during the transaction and the fraud still occurred.
It has long been argued that cheques are less safe with respect to fraud, however as we can see the massive amount of monies being stolen via electronic means still demonstrate electronic payments are not %100 safe . Last year in 2016, I was a victim to credit card fraud, although there were a couple of things interesting in this issue. Firstly, the bank did not detect the fraud I had to alert them. Secondly even after the investigation ceased, the bank did not bother to tell me how the fraud occurred. Third the card that was subject to the fraud I rarely used and fourth they did not have a PIN number. At the end of the ordeal, I decided to close my account and never bank with that institution again, because several week prior my colleague of the same bank was also a victim of his credit card being defrauded.
One of the best things Governments and Law enforcement love about electronic payments is the ability to trace and store huge amounts of data about each person. The legal professional also favor subpoenaing electronic history records for legal matters. While you may not be doing anything wrong, there is always a chance you by accident make an error and this electronic data will further cement your wrong doing or abstracted conviction.
People ask me “what is your issue with technology?” The reality is I used to love technology, in fact technology helped me progress in my career, however technology is not what I am against. What I disagree with is technology being used to stalk and monitor and be used as an effective weapon against people in a way which attempts to normalise or excuse intrusive wrong doing to an individual. I believe this is the perfect setting for a dictator in waiting, while we may not have dictator in government now, it does not mean nothing like this could happen in the future. The hard reality is that any future government may choose to implement new policies which may cause serious adverse risk to its citizens. e.g imagine a religious organisation in power choosing to target people because they may drink alcohol, gender, didn't go to church, sexuality, had a different religious belief system etc. I know to an Australian reading this would sound totally fictional and absurd, however history always has the tendency to repeated itself. How easy would it have been for Hitler to weed out his objectors, how more easier would Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein had found implement their strict rulings with electronic monitoring programs like we have already installed and permitted our government to implement against our citizens. Sadly the profiling of certain types of citizens around the world has already begun, Pakistan has already attempted to obtain information from Facebook to seek out those accused of blasphemy , The Syrian government was said to have used electronic monitoring to injure, arrest or kill anyone apposing the government at hand. Just because things are stable in Australia, does not mean the future will be the same. The only safest defense against any possible information used against citizens is not to store the information from the beginning. Therefore, as you can see it is the misuse of technology against people is what I am most concerned about, not the technology itself. Any technology used to benefit and help people I openly embrace and celebrate, likewise any technology which can be used against a person I totally disapprove and urge you to do the same. At the moment all Australian citizens have their meta-data collected and stored for at least 2 years through the “ Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015 ” as if somehow we are all criminals. The governments reasoning is to protect the citizens, which is a foley. In Australia many more people have died on the roads drink driving than in a terrorist attack here, which the same can also be said for the cause of death from one punch attacks. Instead the Government decided to politically motivate a fear and anxiety in order for mass surveillance. If we sat in front of a prime minister’s house, watched every entry and exit of his house and office, listened to every call, fax or email that he sent we would be surely interrogated, and yet a government which consists of no more than 176 people ( 76 Upper House + 150 Lower House) has seen fit to excuse the same mass surveillance which encroach on individual and democratic freedoms to its 24.5 million citizens.
I used to joke these days I cant even scratch my left nut in privacy without someone or something monitoring my every move. With the advent of GPS installed in every smart phone, there is always a record of where each person is, has been and at what time and then extrapolate this information to what that person is likely to be doing [Apple / Google tracking example]. The Government no longer need to force personal monitoring tracking systems via a ID card, because the population has done it voluntarily by having mobile phones in their possession. This is akin to leaving a pair of handcuffs on the ground and a criminal finding them and voluntarily placing the hand cuffs on his wrists. The reality is with electronic payments systems their will always be a way to monitor what you buy, when, how often, and above all, this information will be stored for later use. What does this later use entail? Who knows, although what we are already seeing is the start of previously stored data about a person being used in criminal cases. Here is an interesting article which demonstrates the classic “ foot in the door ” approach where the Australian government reviewing the expansion of previously collected meta-data for terrorism purposes to be used in civil legal cases e.g divorce or family courts for children placement purposes.
Black money is the monies which are not taxed and thus the government or tax department don’t know where the money is, how you obtained it and how you could afford that lovely new BMW. Their are in particular two main groups that will be affected due to a cashless society. Firstly the little man, the pensioner and small business, these sections of the community are minority groups. The small business who thrives on cash payments such as lawn and garden care, cleaners and the like may pocket a little extra cash on the side doing other non business related activities that give small amounts of payment. The government will be able to target these people while at the same time large corporations continue to find tax evasion methods to avoid paying millions in taxes. The second group of individuals that will be affected are the criminals, drug dealers and gangs etc, because it will be difficult to move money around without being monitored by the government. Which is to say that long term unemployed or 18 year old person driving that new BMW or owns a house will be identified by computer systems easily. The interesting comparisons between these two groups and the main reason I picked these groups, is the government will paint the main reason for a cashless society are to stop criminal behaviour or to stop tax evasion. Thus, the government is likely to steer away from revealing minority groups such as small business or the old pensioner doing an odd job to pocket small change will greatly be affected in a cashless society.
Targeted advertising is not a new thing, in fact targeting tracking is common place through all aspects of the Internet and is also used to profile the computer user. Of interest to you are two programs Ghostery.com and LightBeam formally known as collusion. Both of these programs have different aims at protecting the computer users privacy by their information being tracked, collected and to promote safer internet usage. The Ghostery addon’s main function is show the users which websites are tracking and allows the user to actively block third party tracking and cookies by selecting which trackers you don’t want to track you. Within the Ghostery tour they state “ trackers use this information to deliver adds, analysis your behaviour, connect to social media, provide comments section and more.” With regards to Lightbeam, this addon provides the computer user a visual representation to all of the websites you have visited and all of the third parties who are tacking very website you have visited. I must add, to watch just how many third parties are actively tracking you in one day of Internet use is just frightening. I would recommend you view the inventor of collusion Gary Kovacs “track the trackers” . I highly advocate that all computer users who have identified the websites that are tracking them, write to the website organisation and demand they cease all third party trackers. Although it is were preferably not track at all.
At present with cash you have the option to either store it within a bank or locally keep it in your possession e.g wallet, in your house, a safe, even bury it if you so desire. Even though majority of people choose to store their money in a bank, with a cashless society there are no such options available. Australian Banking fees are very expensive and the range of fees range from the ridiculous to absurd which slowly eat away at your own money, for example to close your account a bank will usually take a last ditch effort to snatch a closing account fee. If you use an ATM there is a transaction fee, don’t move your money and still get hit with a monthly fee. The advent of constructing a minimal deposit balance account fee, no problem there is a fee for that as well. Even the trusty paper quarterly paper bank statement now attracts a fee which is more than posting the letter to you. The three main reason fees are issued 1) Maintenance of account, 2) customer gouging and profit 3) enforce customer behavoiural change. What better way to change behavior by having a financial gun held to your head to compliance reasons. It’s very unfortunate all of the 4 big Australian banks have exorbitant fee structures. However all is not lost with some of the minor banks have fee free accounts, although they generally do not offer interest. Therefore one needs to account what eats away at the money most, a monthly bank fee or a bank with no fees yet provides no interest. With regards to these two options, typically the wisest action would be if you have a smaller amount of money in an account the no fee no interest accounts will work in your favor, however if you have large amounts of money in your account, then the account that provides interest is likely to outweigh the monthly fees. The issue with a cashless society is once there is no cash, no choice is available to move your money if so desired, other than gold/silver etc; which places the banking sector and/or government in a position of total control where they can charge what they want, when they want and how often they want and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Except sit and watch your money be stripped from your account.
On the 1st August 2016 NSW/ACT launched their cashless payment system called the “Opal Card” . In theory, this card has some advantages over cash and paper tickets, such as a quick tap and go system, the line progression through the Isles are likely to be quicker and of course all the money is in one location to pay for trains, buses, ferry and light rail. Even though this is very convenient it still comes at a hidden cost, privacy. The reality is that your card will track your tap on and tap off , that will somewhere record and store this data. The downside of this is the possibility this information can be used to spy on that person, to profile the persons typical routes and times etc. The Opal card is an excellent example which demonstrates how the replacement of a previous paper ticketing system with a electronic cashless system leaves the user of the card absolutely powerless for public transport anonymity, if people who decide to connect auto payment direct debits to the Opal Card. At present the only thing you can do to protect your privacy is not arrange direct debit, and don’t sign up specifically for the card itself, instead purchase a card at a local dealer which doesn’t record who purchases the card. This is confirmed in page 8 of the privacy policy under the heading 4.1 Opal Cards , states “ Although the Opal card does not store a customers personal information, we are able to connect the Opal card number to the customers details that we hold in relation to a registered Opal card or a concessional Opal card. This is not the case for unregistered non-concessional Opal cards, where providing personal information for the purposes of the Opal Ticketing System is voluntary” However this action still does not stop a government service video recording the faces at the payment terminal to make later comparisons at the payment stalls and later making the connections which is noted on page 15 under title “ unregistered card: what is collected” of the Opal Card Privacy Policy.
While purely fictional, we see in the movie Demolition Man whereby 'John Spartan' AKA Sylvester Stallone a LAPD cop swears and is fined credits electronically via a computer terminal. This concept is already occurring abet in a totally different way, e.g in Australia the 'Department of State Revenue Office' (SDRO) is capable and on occasion practices electronically fleecing bank accounts to acquire unpaid moneys by using the term 'garnishing' the bank account. While I am not discussing the ethics behind why a person hadn't paid money, because quite frankly there are most probably a million reasons. However I am merely stating that a garnishee order is equivalent to a court order, hence your account will be temporarily frozen leaving you to be unable to remove any money until payments is sorted. I have seen a person on welfare have their entire account fleeced without that person able to buy food. That person then had to make contact and make payment arrangements.
More recently however, if we look at the global financial crisis (GFC) which started around late 2007 we can see the effects upon the world, in particular to the Greece economy. In this case the Greece government had frozen all bank accounts in Greece and people were unable to remove the amount they wished from there bank accounts. Instead the people of Greece were told there accounts were initially frozen, and later when and how much they could remove and no more. If having the citizens of Greece unable to remove money in order to buy things they need wasn't bad enough, the Government had also issued a broad account tax (AKA account Haircut), where each account holder lost money. Regardless of the government and world bank justifications the act of preventing people removing there own money is wrong. Likewise, the act of then placing an instant tax causing the population to lose money again is wrong. If I were to stand at your door and prevent you to enter, I would be arrested. If while you were waiting to get into your house I walked in and took %10 of everything you had that would be classified as theft pure and simple. Hence the people of Greece who had money in bank accounts were at the total mercy of the Governments and banks. However those who had cash and did not have money sitting in the bank accounts were not affected, they had the freedom to choice when, where and how much they wanted to spend. I am not debating the necessity of the actions of the Greece Government and banks, I am just looking at the basics of what is fair, black and white good or bad. I believe in this world too many people make allowances for mistakes and these allowances is what continues to permits fraud, illegal activity and other injustices of the world where the honest people are always at a loss to clean up the mess of the unjust.
The advantage that many institutions have over majority of consumers is that many customers don't have the time to research the dangers of certain technology, it is also more comforting to blindingly accept what we are told. Questioning the integrity, honesty and accuracy of information is paramount, however most organisations rely of the fact that many behind the scenes details the community can not readily obtain. If I told you there was a %75 present chance that all your money will be taken, would you still use that technology? I'm not saying this is the statistic, however it was the point how much do you actually know?
One may simply think “the government already has control over me so why does it matter?” While it is true governments in the developed countries have a degree of control over its citizens, this control is still not 100%. However, the future pending financial control and restrictions inhibiting how you use your money, when and however you wish, while also being monitored is the key to full population control. With a full cashless society in place, population surveillance will be an automatic outcome. For those doubters who disregard my last sentence, one only has to see the effects of financial control within a controlling domestic violent relationship has upon its victim, its impacts, how it restricts the freedoms of the victim and how it creates dependency to the perpetrator.
I hope this article gives the reader some “food for thought”. If you have read this far I hope you feel you have now been adequately forewarned regarding the dangers which exist, and lay ahead for all of us should we continue to primarily use electronic forms of payment systems. Just because you maybe unaware of an issue, does not mean that issue does not exist, nor does it mean the possibility of that issue materialising some time in the future. Which is exactly what Australians have seen with the new 2 year meta-data retention policy, 20 years ago we never had it, people would have been called paranoid even worrying about the possibility would occur in that era, and yet now it exists. Always read the terms and conditions for any account you sign up for.
Until next time...
Darren Hamburger
Page Last update:31/05/2017
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